


Like Metal From the Sea

by misura



Category: Aria of the Sea - Dia Calhoun
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Growing Old Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8819230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Elliana and Cerinthe, twenty-five years later.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thishasnomeaning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishasnomeaning/gifts).



> not canon compliant with Phoenix Dance, probably, as I haven't read that book (yet)

They came from the school - two dainas and a daine, full of admiration and praise for the woman who had been the greatest dancer of her time.

Cerinte had spoken with two of them before, when she had visited the school. Once, twice, she had been offered the position of resident mederi, but both times, she had refused.

The first time, she had felt like a coward. Here was a chance to make up for not having saved Sileree, for having stood by quietly instead of speaking up - should she not have taken it? Was this not a way to turn her bitter experience into something positive, something better?

The second time, she had known that she had done the right thing. Better to leave the position to someone for whom the school did not hold so many memories - some happy, but some sad.

 

"You _dare_."

Elliana had received her visitors sitting down, not getting up as they had entered.

Cerinthe thought that she was probably the only one who knew that it was not out of arrogance that Elliana had not risen to greet her guests. It was because, without her cane, Elliana was unable to stand.

Daina Melianthe looked surprised. "But - "

"As if it's not bad enough that you had my portrait painted by a complete hack," Elianna said. "Now you want to put some inexperienced chit on the stage, pretending to be me? And you expected me to be _pleased_? To feel _honored_?"

"We were thinking a pearl, or perhaps even an emerald for the first act," Daine Rothan said. He looked a little offended. "They would be about the right age."

The ballet would start with Elliana's time at the school, then. Cerinthe thought it was a sensible choice, a good way to show Elliana's transformation from an arrogant, lazy dancer with great promise (and a deeply unpleasant personality) to one who had fully realized that potential (and still wasn't very nice at all).

"For the final act, of course, we would choose a diamond," Daina Melianthe added. She still looked a bit shocked, like it had never occurred to her that someone who danced brilliantly might also be rude. "We have some very talented young dainas who would be thrilled at the chance to honor the great Daina Elliana Nautilus in such a way."

Elliana snorted. "I'm sure they would be."

Cerinthe almost felt sorry for the daina. Almost. It was clear to her that what Daina Melianthe really wanted to do was be rude right back. She had chosen to flatter Elliana instead - perhaps because she didn't want to start an argument, or perhaps because she felt that preserving her own good manners was more important than calling out Elliana's bad ones.

Elliana had received a great deal of flattery, when she had still danced regularly. There was a reason her portrait hung in the Gallery of the Great at the school - _that_ was not flattery.

The painter had chosen to show Elliana with a cane, to symbolize the obstacles she had overcome in her life. To remind people who saw it that there was always hope, that you should never give up on your dreams, no matter how hopeless they seemed.

Elliana had been furious when she had found out.

Cerinthe, remembering a conversation she had once had with Sileree, had not been quite sure how she felt. It was not a bad message, she had thought, but it was not a true one, either.

"If you don't want to, naturally, we will honor your wishes," Daina Alean said. She reminded Cerinthe of Daina Odonna. "Take some time to consider it."

Elliana glared. "I don't _need_ some time to consider it."

Daina Alean rose. Daine Rothan and Daina Melianthe followed suit, like puppets whose strings had been pulled. "Nevertheless."

 

Most dancers started their careers when they were about twenty years old. Very few dancers in the Royal Dance Company were over the age of thirty-five.

"A dancer uses her or his body much more intensely than a regular person," Mederi Grace had explained to Cerinthe once. "There is a price to pay for that use."

It did not help, of course, that there were always new dancers, younger dancers, eager for a chance to prove themselves. The Royal Dance Company was famous, and every girl or boy who attended the school did so in the hopes of being offered a position there.

When Elliana had been able to walk again without a cane, Daina Oleanna had assigned her to the agates - the aggies. The youngest students.

Elliana had yelled and cried and thrown things, but in the end, she had still gone to class. She had not listened to Cerinthe's suggestion to wait, to allow her leg more time to heal, so that next time she danced for Daina Oleanna, Elianna might convince her to put her back with the pearls.

By the time Elliana had joined the Royal Dance Company, she had been twenty-five.

On the day of her graduation, Daina Oleanna had told Cerinthe what a shame it was that Elliana had squandered so much of her potential, that she would have so few years to dance as she had been meant to dance.

 

"I suppose that you want me to accept," Elliana said, when their guests had departed.

"I want you to think about it sensibly and calmly before you decide," said Cerinthe. "That is all."

Elliana scowled. "When have I ever been sensible, or calm? Where has being sensible and calm gotten _you_? Stuck with a bitter old woman who hates you, with nobody who will remember you for anything you have accomplished during your life at all."

"I don't need other people to remember my accomplishments," Cerinthe said. "I remember them perfectly well myself."

"They'll probably make it a love story, you know," Elliana said. "The ballet. Admit it, that's why you want me to agree. What a coup it would be, for a lowly commoner like you to get her own ballet."

Cerinthe had not considered that any ballet depicting Elliana's dancing career would also include _her_. Elliana was right, though; it probably would.

"Perhaps you should have considered a little more carefully before you suggested for us both to dance on Kasakol's Gable."

Mederi Grace had told Cerinthe that a mederi, too, was an artist.

Cerinthe did not think that she would consider herself anything like the greatest mederi of her time, but she knew that there was a lot that she had accomplished in her life. She certainly did not feel like she was the _least_ mederi of her time.

"Perhaps I should have switched places with you," Elliana said. "Death or glory. But I let Maiga talk me into playing it safe."

"You thought the greater height would scare me."

Elliana looked thoughtful. "Perhaps - if they would let _me_ dance ... "

"You can barely walk."

"Walking isn't dancing," Elliana said. "And it wouldn't be for very long. A short dance. You could do the choreography. After all," she added with a sly smile, "you know my body better than anyone."

Cerinthe shook her head. This was not as it had been the first time, when Elliana had needed to learn how to use her body again, how to convince her legs to carry her. How to listen when her body told her it needed rest, and how to know when it was safe to ignore the pain.

Then, the argument that if Elliana rushed things now, she might ruin everything, had sometimes worked.

Now, Cerinthe knew, there was nothing to heal. A person's body did not recover from age.

"If you won't, I'll simply refuse." Elliana shrugged. "It's all the same to me, really."

"Perhaps that's for the best, after all," Cerinthe said. "You can simply celebrate your fortieth birthday with your family and friends."

Elliana grimaced.

"Your family," Cerinthe amended. "I beg your pardon. I forgot for a moment that you don't have any friends." At first, when people had asked her what she was to Elliana, Cerinthe had told them that she was Elliana's mederi. After a while, the answer had changed, but people had already stopped asking by then.

"If I'd had any say in it, I wouldn't have any family, either," Elliana said. "Mind, it's kind of fun to see how fat and ugly my sisters have gotten, but not so much that I want to put up with them for an entire afternoon."

Cerinthe said nothing. Once upon a time, she had assumed that perhaps Elliana's family was not so horrible as Elliana, that Elliana was the mean one in a perfectly nice, if perhaps not very clever, set of sisters and brothers. She had been wrong.

"If I ask, I'm sure that they'll agree to let you do the choreography. That was the one thing you were always better at than me."

"If I choreograph, it will be for a ballet of my own choosing," Cerinthe said. "A story of my own choosing. Not theirs, and not yours. You probably won't like it at all."

Elliana gestured dismissively. "Of course I won't like it. So you'll do it? You want me to ask?"

If Elliana asked, not even Daina Alean would refuse. And Elliana was right; Cerinthe was good at choreography. It was not her passion, but it was something she enjoyed.

"Please," she said.

 

The ballet was named _Sileree's Song_.

It would be forever remembered as the last time Daina Elliana Nautilus had danced on a stage.


End file.
